Walking Through Fire: How One Nonprofit is Guiding Eaton Fire Survivors from Grief to Renewal
One attendee at a recent fire remembrance procession in Altadena told organizers it was the first time they had been able to cry since losing their house – an experience that felt like “a welcoming back home” after months of displacement.
Another described the gathering as a rare source of “joy and hope” in a recovery landscape dominated by information sessions and protests, but offering few spaces for collective grief.
Those moments captured the spirit of a recent fire procession organized by the local nonprofit Hands in the Soil (HITS), which is working to help survivors of the Eaton Fire process trauma and reconnect with their community
The procession through West Altadena drew nearly 200 people for a slow, ceremonial walk. HITS co-founders Yancy Comins and Audrey Capilla designed a route that moved through neighborhoods directly impacted by the fire with multiple stops to honor people, places and the land itself.
At one point, participants approached a “fire threshold” framed by two small ceremonial fires tended by an elder firekeeper. Attendees were invited to walk between the flames, reflecting on the anger, fear and grief they still carried and symbolically leaving some of it behind.
“We wanted to reintroduce ourselves to fire so that folks could restart a fresh relationship and not be mad at the element of fire itself,” Comins said.
The California Community Foundation supported the nonprofit last year with a grant from its Wildfire Recovery Fund. HITS also received a grant last fall from the Community Healing and Restoration initiative – a consortium of funders that awarded more than $8 million in grants to over 60 programs dedicated to strengthening community bonds.
Fire survivor Nicole Vazquez walked in the procession in West Altadena and said the event stood out among a multitude of local recovery efforts. She felt the experience helped forge a deeper sense of belonging and ecological awareness in a traumatized community.
“The procession integrated spirituality and a deep connection and relationship with the land,” Vazquez said. “I think it started to sow the seeds of a deeper connection between us, but also to the land and our relationship to the land and soil.”
Vazquez lost her West Altadena home in the Eaton Fire that forced her and her wife to evacuate their home the night of Jan. 7. The next morning, a neighbor texted to tell her the house was in flames. Now living in Glendale, Nicole works as program coordinator for My Tribe Rise, a grassroots nonprofit founded in 2019 to support Altadena’s most vulnerable residents and is now focused on fire recovery and advocacy, particularly for Black and Latino community members. CCF supported My Tribe Rise with a grant from its Wildfire Recovery Fund last year.
The procession reflects the broader mission of HITS, which is to offer community wellness and environmental programming. In the months after the wildfire, the organization saw an opportunity to move into the “in between spaces” of recovery—after the flames are out, but long before life feels settled, Comins said.
To fill those gaps, HITS runs weekly trauma-informed yoga classes, blending traditional yoga with intuitive movement, calming practices and even Qigong. The sessions are beginner-friendly and focused on breath and emotional regulation that participants can carry into daily stresses, including tense conversations with insurance adjusters, according to Comins.
The goal is for people to “leave here lighter and stronger than when they came at the doors,” Comins said. Classes are led with “trauma informed care, so that folks can feel the love in the space and not just feel like they’re coming to a movement class.”
The group also holds men’s and women’s healing circles, which function like informal group therapy, Capilla said. Those sessions have surfaced grief and anger not only about the fire but about long-ignored losses in other parts of life.
The nonprofit also developed partnerships with local groups including Arlington Garden in Pasadena and Dena Heals, which have hosted programming and collaborated on community wellness efforts. HITS served nearly a thousand community members through dozens of program sessions, according to its 2025 impact report.
Financial support from CCF has allowed HITS to sustain and deepen this work – especially by compensating musicians, ceremonial leaders, healers, and naturalists.
“These people who offer such valuable resources deserve to essentially create livelihood via these offerings,” Capilla said.
Looking ahead, HITS hopes to make the fire procession an annual event for at least the next five years, giving the community a recurring space to witness regrowth and continued healing along the fire’s path, while expanding ecological programs and virtual offerings for those who can no longer call Altadena home.
For Vazquez, the fire remembrance procession and a recent community dinner represent a new model of recovery – one that blends grief, healing, and a renewed relationship to the land and soil that burned beneath their homes. She described Comins as a humble but powerful community catalyst.
“He’s what some people call a servant leader, in that he’s centering other people,” she said.
For more information about HITS, visit handsinthesoil.com.
– Ben Poston
